by which I mean I don’t perceive it to be small, not that it is invisible to me.
The irony in that fact wasn’t deliberate, but deciding to keep the wording once I’d unthinkingly written it was. Happy accidents…
His name is Dr Sharma and if you want to picture him, think of an Indian take on David Suchet’s Poirot, without the moustache. He’s such a happy man, and he’s so little. He’s been my dentist all my life and, every time he sees me, he gives it the old: Oh Joe, you’ve grown as if he’s family and guh, I love him a little bit okay?.
Whenever I refer to myself in the third person (which happens precociously often), I tend to use Jallen. I suppose I like the idea of having a nickname which I don’t hate, and I like the almost poetic combination of my fore- and surnames, but maybe that’s just me being poncey.
031a. No, I did not come up with Jallen myself. As I recall it was first used about two years ago in Year 11, but properly took off within the last few months of Year 12.
There’s a weird amount of pride attached to it. It’s awesome.
My mum smokes, and she smokes when she washes clothes. I find the smell fucking disgusting. If I smoked then I wouldn’t mind — it’d only be fair for me to bear my cross, as it were — but I don’t, so I don’t see why I should.
I like smelling nice; of aftershave or Dove body wash, say. Second to that, smelling of nothing would suit me to the ground. When I know I reek of smoke I get horribly anxious; I don’t want to be around people because I’m sure they wouldn’t want to be around me.
by which I mean people misinterpreting the things I say and the words I write; I don’t mean people not ‘getting’ me as a person. I’m fine with the latter one. It’s happened a lot.
It’s why I articulate myself in the way I do. I know I speak in an awfully longwinded fashion and I know I abuse both the semi-colon and the Oxford comma, but it’s important to me to get my message across. It’s one of the many reasons why I dislike stammering and why I do like learning another language.
and an angry stammer, and a baffled stammer, and a terrified stammer, and a crestfallen stammer.
Any time I can’t think straight, basically, I can’t talk straight. That’s how it works, and it’s fucking annoying.
In case you’ve ever wondered, Hs are the worst to stammer on. With any other consonant, at least you’re chattering a sort of tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh or beh-beh-beh and it’s clear your stammering; with vowels, your face freezes silently and, again, it’s clear your stammering. In my experience, you just get this long, lecherous exhalation of breath with Hs and people are like WTF is going on? and you’re just like hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhurrrr
Granted, I, like everyone I know except my brother, always sing idly if there’s time to kill and quiet to fill, but when it’s 1am or so and I have the street to myself I always think why the fuck not and go for it. Anything I can get my diaphragm round works: Elbow’s The Night Will Always Win; ALW’s Love Changes Everything; Oh, What a Circus… from Evita; Killer Queen; the list goes on.
I heartily recommend it to anyone who enjoys singing and leaving the house. I am by no stretch of the imagination a good singer — I have a reading voice, not one for singing — and the measures of poison that an average night out entails does nothing for my throat, but it’s fucking fun and has the great effect of psyching any passer-by out; they either take you for a drunkard, and leave you alone, or a nutter, and leave you alone. It’s fab. Try it :)
Fact 025a: I particularly enjoy singing Love Changes Everything because I never get to even hum it at home. It always makes my mum burst into tears which means it’s absolutely off limits and, of course, the more I’m told I can’t sing it, the more I want to.
I just really like teaching and learning and knowledge and facts and analysis, and it makes me really happy to share knowledge with others. I hold maths in the highest regard because I believe it explains things in such fundamental terms but, at the same time, without being the be-all and end-all of everything.
It’s a philosophical thing, I suppose. Yes, I can prove that the sum of any two consecutive triangle numbers is equal to the square of the distance between them, but first we have to both agree that 1+0=1, or that x multiplied by itself if x2. If you choose not to accept those or any of the other axioms, as they’re called, upon which arithmetic and algebra are founded then the two will amount to nothing.
I also have a lot of respect for teachers. The whole pensions business aside (I’m too tired to be topical), they work fucking hard and it’s really difficult to be a good teacher. We’ve all had lessons where we don’t want to bother — lessons where we turn up and don’t even try — but, even then, these guys still have to stand up in front of thirty-or-however-many lethargic, cocksure, hormonal teenagers and try to pass on some valuable piece of information to the inattentive public. That’s not easy by any stretch, but they do it, and I hold that to be infinitely commendable.
I really hope I’ll be a good teacher. I can’t see myself doing anything else.
ie the ones that give you laundry information, usually found at the nape of the neck or — even better — at the left flank seam, near the waist. When they’re the proper looped ones, not just single tabs, I rub them between my fingers because I like the feel of it and, where appropriate, the noise.
As a young Jallen larva, I used to lie stretched out on this one pillow with just such a label at the end and feel it as I slept or fell to sleep. I did that instead of sucking my thumb to any real extent or having a security blanket or anything (although I still had a favourite cuddly toy), and obviously it’s stuck with me through the years.
I mention this because I’m wearing a blue jumper which has, like, the perfect label and I’ve spent all day fiddling about and making the noise. The only other vestment I’m just as bad with is a smart purple jumper I have.
the more you know
(Source: complimentstothechef)
and they’re all arranged on a shirt rack in my room in colour order.
I have a fucking problem.
I think it’s something to do with the fact that, term-time, I’m always a little sleep deprived (aren’t we all?) and that I’ve grown accustomed to regularly taking stuff in while a little bit tired. It’s as though the attitude my brain takes is that of “Fuck it, let’s get this done, and then I can sleep.” By the same token, I always work fastest just before I go to bed.
Whenever I get my full eight hours, forty winks and two cents’-worth of rest, I’m more readily distracted and really don’t work.
or, worse, see them try and bite it back.
I don’t know what it is. I’m not an emotional person and most of the time, things don’t get to me enough to make me cry. The lost and the hurt and the orphaned or widowed can quite easily not faze me, but something about seeing someone who’s been through so much finally breaking really hits me.
The Cancer Research UK advert that’s on at the moment, the one ending on a short of an old gentleman silently starting to cry, as well as the final shot of the music video to Jamie Cullum’s song Gran Torino (showing a weeping Clint Eastwood) choke me right up.
Joe :: eighteen, straight, taken, sixth
form, London periphery. I go by
joedoesnumbers, formerly joe-blogs and
ithrowthistothewind. This is the personal
blog to turnofearth
Elbow, Frank Turner, Shane Koyczan, Panic! at the Disco, Kings of Leon, Jack's Mannequin, Florence + the Machine, Laura Boyle.
Doctor Who, Sherlock, HIGNFY, WLIIA?, Peep Show, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, The IT Crowd, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Father Ted, Futurama, and occasionally HIMYM.
Guy Garvey's Finest Hour (especiallybecause, once, the song I recommended gotplayed). Here's some proof
. I can't even.Guild Wars (R/Mo, Rt/R), Starcraft (Terran), Chrome, n-game, SkiFree. GW 2 as and when.
Gaunt's Ghosts, Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Dan Abnett, Warhammer 40K, reading, writing, maths, French, physics, semi-colons in texts, correcting bad grammar, too many annoying habits, missing the past.
I follow back (most of the time). I'm that cool.
...and finally: I spent 2011 writing
a poem each day, every day for the
entire year. You should check that out.
Time until I see Elbow live:
I absolutely cannot wait.
• Songs that I like •
• 100 facts about Jallen •
• Little gems of information •
• The fic (a work in progress) •
• Click here in case of success •
• Shining beacons of humanity •• I really fucking do love giraffes •
• TARDIS blue • French questions •
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